Sudan

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend has wrestled with these issues recently in government, and I am grateful for what she said. We will continue to work together as she suggests. We will never give up. The point I made to the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), is true: we will never accept a culture of impunity. The ICC successfully indicted General Bashir. No one would have believed that he would go anywhere near the court, but today he is under house arrest. All those Bosnian leaders believed that they could flee and secure impunity, but in the end they were all subject to international justice. I give my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) an absolute undertaking that we will do everything we can, particularly in our role in the international community, to ensure that there is no impunity for the events taking place in Khartoum and across Sudan.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The scenes in Sudan are heartbreaking—the needless loss of the lives not just of civilians but of the brave aid workers who go into those jobs with the biggest of hearts but, in this case, have paid the biggest of prices. I add my voice to those across the House in utter condemnation, and I urge the Minister and the Government to do whatever they can, working with the Quad and the African Union to look at all possibilities. Is there a possibility of an African Union peacekeeping force backed by the Quad? I hope that the Minister can be assured of unanimous support across this House for whatever efforts the Government make to stop this violence from spreading in the first place.

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the hon. Lady for her support and her remarks. In respect of the African Union and any decisions by the Quad, I am sure that she will understand that it is probably too early to pursue that specifically. I also thank her for her condemnation of those who attack humanitarian workers. As I said in my statement, Relief International has lost one, and the World Food Programme has lost three. Two further World Food Programme officials have been very seriously injured.